Cambridge, UK – October 09, 2014 Granta Design today announced the release of CES Selector™ 2015, focused on making it even easier to solve real-world engineering problems. CES Selector is PC-based software used by materials experts and product development teams to make better materials decisions as they seek to improve product performance, reduce costs, and minimize risks. Enhancements include: new tools to help users rapidly specify engineering requirements during materials selection; additional support for Finite Element Analysis (FEA); new and extended data for metals equivalency studies; and improved coverage of plastics and medical materials. There are also new resources for those concerned about environmental and materials supply risks. CES Selector 2015 will be demonstrated at next week’s Materials Science and Technology (MS&T) event in Pittsburgh, PA (October 12-16).

An exciting new feature is the Engineering Solver™, a tool for use during material selection. It helps the user to quickly identify target material properties based on the engineering requirements of the application by means of an intuitive, graphical menu. Other usability changes include making it easier to filter materials by form, material family, additive, or filler/reinforcement type, meaning it’s now faster than ever to find the exact material solution.

Simulation is increasingly important as a means to focus product development effort. CES Selector 2015 supports this trend, with significantly enhanced FEA Exporters (e.g., for: Abaqus 6, ANSYS Classic, ANSYS Workbench, NX Nastran, Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, and SolidWorks), making it even easier to make material selection choices and then export related property data so that your choice can be tested by simulation.

The backbone of CES Selector is quality data. A key resource is the unique MaterialUniverse™ dataset, which covers the full range of engineering materials in nearly 4,000 generic datasheets. MaterialUniverse records are linked to records in more specialist reference datasets, which provide detailed properties for specific material grades or designations. Enhancements to this linking for 2015 make it fast and easy to find metal grades that are ‘equivalent’ (by composition) to a chosen reference metal or ‘similar’ (in performance). Now it’s even easier to find replacement materials or identify the right grades in different regions.

Specialist data modules have also been updated, with new MI-21 metals and StahlDat steels data, plus updated CAMPUS, M-Base and Prospector plastics databases. Subscribers to ASM Medical Materials will find that, with one button-click, they can jump from a selection project in CES Selector directly to relevant information in this leading source of in-depth data on the materials used in medical devices.

Enhanced data and datasheet layouts also improve traceability for environmental data in MaterialUniverse—users can instantly see where the data came from. And CES Selector now augments its library with data from the widely-respected ecoinvent database. Five new risk metrics help users to understand and mitigate materials supply risk due to critical materials, avoiding the use of materials most likely to be impacted by geopolitical factors, physical scarcity, price volatility, or conflict mineral risk.

“We are continuing to refine the usability and to add features and data that increase the practical benefits CES Selector offers to our customers,” commented Dr Charlie Bream, Product Manager for CES Selector at Granta Design. “By listening to feedback from current users we have been able to ensure that CES Selector 2015 will be even more strongly focused on real-world materials challenges.”